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Premises Of Post-Objectivism

IN DEFENSE OF RATIONAL ANARCHISM

Anarchism is a theory of the good society, in which justice and
social order are maintained without the State (or government).
Many anarchists in the libertarian movement (including myself)
were heavily influenced by the epistemological and moral theories
of Ayn Rand. According to these anarchists, Rand's principles, if
consistently applied, lead necessarily to a repudiation of
government on moral grounds.

I call this rational anarchism, because it is
grounded in the belief that we are fully capable, through reason,
of discerning the principles of justice; and that we are capable,
through rational persuasion and voluntary agreement, of
establishing whatever institutions are necessary for the
preservation and enforcement of justice. It is precisely because
no government can be established by means of reason and mutual
consent that all Objectivists should reject that institution as
unjust in both theory and practice.

Although it is sometime useful to distinguish between the meanings
of "State" and "government," such distinctions are irrelevant to
the present discussion, so I shall use the terms interchangeably.
Following the classic discussion of the sociologist and historian
Max Weber, I shall define the "State" as a human community that
(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force within a given territory."

The State is vested with the exclusive power to enact legislation,
adjudicate legal disputes, enforce laws, etc., while forcibly
preventing other individuals and associations from engaging in the
same activities. The State, in other words, exercises a coercive
monopoly in the enforcement of justice. This ultimate power of
decision-making is known in political theory as "sovereignty." In
the words of the historian A. P. d'Entreves, "the problem of the
birth of the modern State is no other than the problem of the rise
and final acceptance of the concept of sovereignty."

The concept of sovereignty is the focal point of the current
debate between anarchists and minarchists (a label coined by Sam
Konkin for the advocates of minimal, or "limited," government).
The fundamental problem is this: Where does the right of
sovereignty come from, and how can it be justified? This is an
especially difficult problem for those in the Lockeian tradition
of minarchism - which, in this context, includes the followers of
Ayn Rand.

John Locke (like Ayn Rand) believed that all rights belong to
individuals. There are no special "group rights" that exist in
addition to individual rights. The rights of all groups (including
the group that calls itself a "government") must be based on, and
in some way derived from, the rights of individuals.

I call this approach political reductionism,
because it maintains that the sovereign rights of a (legitimate)
government are reducible to the rights of individuals. Political
reductionism stands in opposition to political emergence theory,
which argues that at least one right (usually the right to enforce
the precepts of justice) does not originally belong to
individuals, but emerges only in civil societies under
government.

Now, having presented this background material, I will address
several key issues in the minarchist/anarchist controversy.

AYN RAND AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TRADITION

According to John Locke, every person in an anarchistic state of
nature would possess the "executive power" to enforce his own
rights against the aggressive actions of others. But owing to
various "inconveniences" (such as the likelihood of personal bias
when acting as judge in one's own case), Locke argued that
rational people would unanimously agree to leave this state of
nature and join a "civil society," which would thereafter use
majority rule to decide upon a particular form of government, such
as constitutional monarchy, democracy, and so forth.

This "social contract" was Locke's way of accounting for our
obligation to obey the political sovereign. Beginning with the
rights of individuals, Locke tried to show how the executive power
to enforce these natural rights would be delegated, through a
process of consent, to government. Eighteenth-century Americans
were chiefly indebted to John Locke for their belief in government
by consent.

Ayn Rand defends a consent doctrine in several of her essays,
but she never explains how this consent should manifest itself -
whether, for example, it must be explicit or merely tacit (as
Locke believed). Nor does she explain precisely which rights are
delegated to government and how they are transferred. Therefore,
although Rand appears to fall within the social contract tradition
(at least in a general way), it is unclear where she would stand
on the nature and method of political consent. I sincerely
hope that some of her minarchist followers can shed some light on
this problem.

CONSENT THEORY VS. GOVERNMENT

Many of John Locke's critics - such as David Hume, Josiah
Tucker, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham - argued that
the inner logic of consent theory, if consistently applied, will
land us in anarchy. As these critics pointed out, no government
has ever originated in consent, and there is no reason to suppose
that individuals, in full possession of their natural rights,
would ever subordinate themselves voluntarily to a
government.

I agree with these critics. If we accept the premise that
individuals (and only individuals) possess equal and reciprocal
rights, and if we insist that these individuals must consent to be
ruled by a government, and if we condemn as illegitimate all
governments that rule without consent - then all governments, past
and present, have been illegitimate.

Furthermore, I maintain that Objectivists, if they are to remain
true to the consent doctrine, must embrace this kind of "practical
anarchism" and condemn all historical governments as unjust. True,
Objectivists insist that government can be justified in theory -
though none (that I know of) has ever spelled out the necessary
criteria - but this theoretically legitimate government has never
existed anywhere on this earth. Nor can it exist anywhere except
in what Edmund Burke called "the fairyland of philosophy." As
Josiah Tucker (a contemporary of Burke) put it, the consent theory
of government is "the universal demolisher of all governments, but
not the builder of any."

John Locke identified two fundamental problems that must be
addressed by the political philosopher. First, what is the
justification of the State? Second, assuming that we can justify
the State in theory, what are the standards by which we can judge
the legitimacy of a particular government? Too often minarchists
deal only with the first question, while ignoring the
second.

Suppose I am asked what could conceivably change my mind and cause
me to endorse government, and suppose I give the following reply:
"If I believed in the God of Christianity, and if I believed that
God had dispatched a squad of angels to communicate with me
personally, and if these angels told me that the State is a divine
institution, ordained by God for the protection of human rights,
and if these angels further informed me that anarchism would lead
to widespread death and destruction - then, under these
circumstances, I would abandon my anarchism in favor of
minarchism."

But consider an important feature that would be missing from my
newfound justification of the State. While believing that the
State is justified, qua institution, I would not possess specific
standards by which to judge whether a self-professed "government"
is in fact a legitimate State at all, or whether it is merely a
gang of usurpers and oppressors who claim to act on behalf of that
divine institution.

As a remedy for this problem, suppose the angels provide me with a
clear and unmistakable standard, to wit: "You will know legitimate
rulers by the visible halos over their heads. This sign, and this
sign alone, will mark the agents who are authorized by God to act
on behalf of the State." Well, after looking around at the
functionaries of existing governments, and after seeing no such
halos, I would conclude that no one who presently claims to
represent the State is morally authorized to do so. On the
contrary, I would surmise that America is currently in a state of
anarchy, since it contains no legitimate government - so, devoted
minarchist that I am, I would dedicate my life to abolishing our
wicked "government" and to exposing those Satanic politicians who
fraudulently pose as functionaries of that divine institution, the
State.

This is a species of the "practical anarchism" that Objectivists
must logically endorse. For halos, they have substituted consent
as the discernible sign of a legitimate government - and, like
halos, consent is nowhere to be found in real-life governments.
Hence, while defending the State in theory, these
consent-minarchists should oppose all existing governments in
practice. And this, I dare say, is a kind of minarchism that I can
live with quite well - for we are more likely to be visited by
angels than to find a government based on consent.

AYN RAND, ANARCHIST

My next point will probably cause me to be branded as a
psycho-epistemological pervert, but here it is: I am convinced
that Ayn Rand was essentially an anarchist in substance, if not
in name. She was at most a nominal governmentalist. If the
conventional meaning of a word is to count for anything at all
(and it should), then Rand's ideal "government" is in fact no
government at all, but is merely a sheep in wolf's
clothing.

How can I make this outrageous claim? I base it on Rand's moral
opposition to coercive taxation. The power of coercive taxation,
as Alexander Hamilton said inThe
Federalist Papers is the very life-blood of
government. Indeed, the great debate over ratification of the
United States Constitution centered on whether or not the federal
government should have the power to tax. The Articles of
Confederation had withheld this power from Congress, reserving it
exclusively for the states. Many Anti-Federalists opposed the
Constitution because they realized that the federal government, if
granted the power to lay and collect taxes directly from the
people, would strip the states of their sovereign authority.

If the defenders of either side in the ratification debate had
encountered Rand's argument for "voluntary taxation," they would
have assailed it, first, as a veritable contradiction in terms
(which it is), and, secondly, as a rejection of sovereign
government altogether (which it also is). Virtually every
defender of government - from John Locke to Thomas Jefferson to
Ludwig von Mises - has recognized coercive taxation to be an
essential component of sovereignty, a power without which no true
government can exist.

The principle of "voluntary taxation" reduces Rand's
"government" to a free-market protection agency, which, like every
business, must either satisfy its customers or close up shop. What
is to prevent a dissatisfied customer from withholding his money
from a Randian "government," while subscribing instead to the
services of another agency? Why cannot a landowner (or
combination of landowners) refuse to pay for the services of their
Randian "government," which they regard as inefficient, and take
their business elsewhere?

The right to pay for services or not, according to one's own
judgment, is a characteristic of the free market; it has no
relationship, either theoretically or historically, to the
institution of government. There is no way a government can retain
its sovereign power - its monopoly on the use of legitimate force
- if it does not possess the power of compulsory taxation.

When the nineteenth-century minarchist Auberon Herbert advanced
his theory of "voluntary taxation," he was widely praised by
anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker, who embraced him as one of
their own. But he was assailed by fellow minarchists, such as
Herbert Spencer, who correctly pointed out that Herbert's position
was indistinguishable from anarchism. Likewise, Rand's position
on taxation places her squarely in the anarchist camp - her
idiosyncratic use of the word "government" notwithstanding. We
should focus in this debate on the concept of government and its
essential characteristics, not on the word usage of a particular
writer.

OBJECTIVE JUSTICE VS. LEGAL MONOPOLISM

I defend anarchism, or society without the State, because I
believe that innocent people cannot be forced to surrender any of
their natural rights. Those who wish to delegate some of their
rights to a government are free to do so, provided they do not
violate the rights of dissenters who choose not to endorse their
government.

As Ayn Rand has said, the lives of other people are not yours to
dispose of. Yet this is precisely what every government attempts
to do. A government initiates physical force (or the threat of
force) to prohibit other people from exercising their right to
enforce the rules of justice. (Either every person has this
executive power, or no one does, according to the principle of
political reductionism.) A government, while engaging in certain
activities which it claims are just, coercively prevents other
people from engaging in those selfsame activities.

By what moral means, I ask, does a government come to possess this
exclusive right? A government cannot bestow justice on an action
that would be unjust if undertaken by someone else. Nor can a
government, through force or arbitrary decree, render an action
unjust when undertaken by someone else, if that same action is
just when undertaken by government. The principles of justice are
objective and therefore universal; they apply equally and without
exception to every human being, as does every rational precept and
procedure. A mathematical computation, for example, cannot be
correct when computed by a government, and incorrect when computed
by someone else. A deductive syllogism, if valid for those in
government, is equally valid for those outside of government.
Murder, if wrong when committed by an individual, is equally wrong
when committed by a government.

Likewise, an activity, if moral when pursued by a government, is
equally moral when pursued by someone else. All this should be
obvious to those who agree with the principles put forth by Ayn
Rand. If, therefore, the principles of justice are objective
(i.e., knowable to human reason), then a government can no more
claim a monopoly on the legitimate use of force than it can claim
a monopoly on reason.

Those minarchists who claim that justice can prevail only under
government must implicitly defend the view that justice is either
subjective or intrinsic. If justice is subjective, if it varies
from one person to the next, then government can be defended as
necessary to establish objective rules. Likewise, if justice is
intrinsic to government itself, if whatever a government decrees
is necessarily just, then government is justified automatically.

If, however, justice is neither subjective nor intrinsic, but
instead is objective - i.e., if it can be derived by rational
methods from the facts of man's nature and the requirements of
social existence - then the principles of justice are knowable to
every rational person. This means that no person, group of
persons, association, or institution whether known as
"government," "State," or by any other name - can rightfully claim
a legal monopoly in matters pertaining to justice.

Rational anarchism, in short, is simply the application of Ayn
Rand's theory of objective knowledge to the realm of
justice.

STATE-SOVEREIGNTY VS. SELF-SOVEREIGNTY

As far as I know, the first sustained attack on legal pluralism
came from Marsilius of Padua in the fourteenth century. In his
Defender of the Peace, Marsilius attacked the legal
pluralism of his day - especially as it pertained to the political
authority of the Church and he maintained that one authority, and
one alone, should have sovereign power in a given territory.

In defense of this view, Marsilius argued that to deny the right
of sovereignty leads ultimately to a logical contradiction.
Someone - some person, association or institution - must have the
authority to render a final verdict in order for a legal system to
operate. One of Marsilius's more interesting examples went
something like this:

Suppose two "competing governments" (to use the misleading
terminology of Ayn Rand) claim jurisdiction over the same
territory, and suppose both have the right to issue compulsory
subpoenas that require a person to appear in court on a given
day. Furthermore, suppose I receive subpoenas from both agencies
demanding that I appear in court at exactly the same time. Since
it is impossible for me to be in two places at once, it is
impossible for me to obey both governments simultaneously.

Yet this conflicts with our initial premise - that both agencies
have a rightful authority to issue subpoenas - because I am
logically required to disobey at least one of these
governments.

I don't know the official Objectivist position on subpoenas, but
the logic of the foregoing argument can easily accommodate other
examples. The important point here is the reasoning behind this
"logic of sovereignty argument," as it is sometimes called. This
argument exerted considerable influence after 1576, when Jean
Bodin used it to defend absolute monarchy. It was also used for
the same purpose in the seventeenth century by Sir Robert Filmer
(Locke's dead adversary) and Thomas Hobbes.

It is scarcely accidental that the logic of sovereignty argument
was a favorite among the defenders of absolutism, and was
vigorously opposed by John Locke and other champions of limited
government. For consider: If the sovereign (whether one man or
group of men) is the final arbiter in all matters pertaining to
justice, then how can the sovereign himself be held accountable
for committing acts of injustice? The absolutists insisted that he
cannot be so judged by any human authority; the sovereign was
accountable to "none but God."

Sovereign power, in this view, must be absolute (i.e.,
unconditional), because by definition there is no higher authority
than the sovereign himself. The sovereign is therefore above the
law, not under it, which means that there can exist no rights of
resistance and revolution by the people. To advocate a "divided
sovereignty," according to Filmer, Hobbes and other absolutists,
is to advocate anarchy.

I cannot go into the various ways that Locke and other minarchists
tried to get around this logic of sovereignty argument, but I
think the absolutists had the stronger philosophical case. Either
a government has sovereign power, or it doesn't. Either a
government has the final authority to render and execute legal
decisions, or it doesn't. Sovereignty is an all-or-nothing
affair. And if this is true, then no person has a right to resist
the sovereign, however unjust his actions may appear. For who is
to decide whether a law is unjust, if not the sovereign himself?
Who is to decide whether a right has been violated, if not a
sovereign government in its role as final arbiter?

In any dispute between a sovereign government and its subjects,
the government itself must decide who is right; and, as Locke
suggested, the sovereign, like everyone else, is likely to be
biased in his own favor.. I would therefore like to know how those
Objectivists who use the logic of sovereignty argument as a weapon
against anarchism can avoid sliding down the slippery slope into
absolutism.

If I am arrested for smoking pot or for reading a prohibited book
(say, Atlas Shrugged) do I have a right forcibly to
resist my incarceration?

If you say "no," then you are defending absolutism. If you say
"yes," then what happened to the sovereign power of government to
render final decisions in matters of law? - for in resisting the
government I am clearly acting as judge in my own case.

Ayn Rand somewhere says that a government becomes tyrannical when
it attempts to suppress freedom of speech and press, but who is to
decide when this line has been crossed, if not the sovereign
government? Surely we can't have crazy people like Ayn Rand
running around condemning some laws as unjust and calling for
disobedience, because this will lead to anarchy. We cannot preach
sovereignty when it suits our purpose, and then oppose it when we
don't like particular laws, for this undermines the rationale of
sovereignty itself - i.e., that legal matters cannot be left to
the discretion of individuals. The doctrine of natural rights,
as foes of consent theory repeatedly pointed out, is inherently
anarchistic. Burke called natural rights "a digest of anarchy,"
while Bentham castigated them as "anarchical fallacies."

If at any point Objectivists are willing to admit that individuals
have the right to resist an unjust law or overthrow a despotic
government, then they are conceding the basic premise of
anarchism: namely, that true sovereignty resides in each
individual, who has the right to assess the justice of a
particular law, procedure or government.

There can be no (logically consistent) middle ground between
state-sovereignty and self-sovereignty, between absolutism and
anarchism. I defend the self-sovereignty of anarchism. If
Objectivists do not understand how I can defend the individual as
the "final authority in ethics," I recommend they read Ayn Rand's
essay on that topic.

THE LOGIC OF STATE-SOVEREIGNTY VS. OBJECTIVE JUSTICE

In over twenty-five years of arguing with Randian minarchists, I
have encountered few who seem even remotely aware that the logic
of sovereignty argument has been a central theme in political
theory for over four centuries. Those familiar with its long
history will understand that it has everywhere and always been
used to defend and expand the absolute power of government.

In The
Federalist Papers, for example, both Madison and Hamilton
repeatedly use the logic of sovereignty argument to defend
extensive discretionary powers in the federal government, and to
prove that no limit can logically be imposed on the taxing power
of Congress. Indeed, Hamilton insists that an "unqualified" (i.e.,
absolute) power to tax is logically deducible from the axiom of
sovereignty, and Madison defends a similar position.

As the saying goes, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with
fleas. The minarchists who lie down with the logic of sovereignty
argument are infested with the fleas of absolutism, but apparently
they haven't noticed or don't care.

Our primary concern should be with the justice of a legal system -
i.e., with what laws are enforced, not with who
enforces them. This justice can be ascertained by objective
standards of right.

If the legal system of an agency (whether governmental or private)
is truly just as evaluated by objective standards - and if, by
"competition," we mean any attempt forcibly to overturn this legal
system, replacing it with an unjust system - then our agency may
forcibly resist and overthrow the outlaw agency, owing to its
effort to violate individual rights.

As I said, however, the right to suppress the outlaw agency has
nothing to do with the alleged necessity for a final arbiter.
Rather, it is simply an application of the right of every
individual, whether by himself or in combination with others, to
resist and repel despotism, whatever the source of that despotism
may be. The pertinent issue, therefore, is not whether we need a
coercive monopoly to enforce justice; but whether we can determine
the justice of legal system by objective methods, and whether,
having objectively condemned a given system as unjust, we can then
forcibly resist any individual or agency which seeks to impose
that system.

This has everything to do with the individual right of
self-defense, as manifested in the libertarian rights of
resistance and revolution, and has nothing whatever to do with the
supposed need for a final arbiter.

Objectivists, if they are to remain true to the theory of rights
defended by Ayn Rand, must agree with anarchists that the moral
legitimacy of a particular government depends, not on the
subjective claims of that government, but on true measure of
justice in its legal system, as evaluated by objective
criteria.

If a legal system is objectively just, then its enforcement
agency (whether governmental or private) may properly restrain the
"competition" of an unjust legal system, whether implemented by a
government or by a private agency. If, however, the competitor
also works within the framework of a just legal system (perhaps
differing from the other agency in optional matters of procedure),
then that competitor may not be forcibly restrained from entering
into contractual relationships with willing customers.

The logic of sovereignty argument is valid only within a
subjective theory of justice, where a coercive arbiter must
prevail in the absence of reason. In an objective theory of
justice, however, what appears to minarchists (mistakenly) as the
logic of sovereignty - i.e., the right forcibly to eliminate
unjust agencies - has in fact nothing to do with the supposed need
for a final arbiter, but is instead the application of an
individual's right of self-defense.

Minarchists, after noting that an objective theory of justice can
generate the right to exclude competing agencies in some
cases (i.e., when the agency is unjust), erroneously conclude that
this right flows from political sovereignty. But sovereignty
demands the exclusion of competing agencies in all cases,
even if the competitor is far more just than the sovereign
itself. Sovereignty, based as it is on subjectivism, cannot
logically discriminate between just and unjust legal systems, so
it transforms the de facto power of an existing government into de
jure sovereignty - operating, in effect, from the maxim of
Alexander Pope, "Whatever is, is right." This is why the theory of
sovereignty and its attendant absolutism have always denied the
rights of resistance and revolution.

A system of objective justice, on the other hand, enables us to
discriminate between the initiation of force and the retaliatory
use of force, thereby providing a rational method of assessing any
person, agency or government which claims to use legitimate
violence. Furthermore, a system of objective justice defines and
sanctions the use of defensive violence, which has traditionally
been expressed in libertarian theory as the rights of resistance
and revolution.

These rights, which stem from the individual right of
self-defense, can justify the suppression of any agency or
government that seeks to impose an unjust legal system. And though
this suppression of "competition" may sometimes bear a superficial
resemblance to the sovereign suppression of all competition
(whether just or unjust), this should not mislead Objectivists and
libertarians into supposing that these two actions - one by a
sovereign government, the other by a private justice agency - are
based on the same mode of justification.

One (suppression by a sovereign government) is rooted in political
subjectivism (or relativism), and has no relationship to the
justice or injustice of the victimized agency. The other
(suppression by a justice agency) is rooted in political
objectivism, and is confined solely the suppression of unjust
agencies and governments. The former power is justified by
political sovereignty, a right that cannot be reduced to the
rights of individuals. The latter power is justified by the right
of self-defense, a right that is possessed equally by every
individual and can be delegated (or not) to a specialized
agency. The former theory leads necessarily to absolutism and
cannot be reconciled with consent. The latter theory generates
agencies whose power is specifically limited by the consensual
delegation of rights by individuals.

As I have said before, we must ultimately choose between
state-sovereignty and self-sovereignty, between absolutism and
anarchy, between subjective decree and objective justice.
There is no middle ground in logic. The chickens of the Law of the
Excluded Middle have come home to roost. And they are fouling the
minarchist nest.

LEGAL PLURALISM VS. STATE-SOVEREIGNTY IN HISTORY

The lesson here is that power is always dangerous, regardless of
who wields it - be it a private protection agency or a sovereign
government.

As Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely." Even the rulers in an ideal Objectivist
society would be likely to abuse their power, and would therefore
require constant monitoring. (I ask you, who is more likely to
seek power in an Objectivist society - the Howard Roarks or the
Ellsworth Tooheys?) It was this concern about the abuse of power
that led Thomas Jefferson and others in his tradition to favor
decentralization, a system in which power is checked by other
external powers.

This was the original idea behind "limited government." A "limited
government" was a government whose power was limited, or checked,
by another power external to itself. Ultimately,
according to Locke, Jefferson, and other minarchists, the only
effective check on sovereign power is the right of the people to
resist unjust laws and overthrow despotic governments. This
sovereign right of the people was the external check that imposed
real limits on a "limited government."

There are very good reasons to suppose that legal pluralism
would be more effective in preserving justice than legal
monism. The Western legal tradition, as many historians have
pointed out, was rooted in legal pluralism. Legal pluralism
existed in Europe for many centuries, until it was finally
destroyed by rapacious and violent monarchs. Medieval Europe had a
complex network of political authorities, legal systems and
overlapping jurisdictions. There existed customary law, the king's
law, feudal law, municipal law, canon law, and so forth. What some
minarchists claim cannot exist, therefore, did in fact exist for
many centuries.

Moreover, as Voltaire, Lord Acton and other liberal historians
have argued, the Western World owes its liberty to the conflict
among these competing authorities. Neither the spiritual nor the
temporal authorities had libertarian intentions, but the ongoing
competition between these institutions gradually led to the
development of "intermediate" institutions (such as
municipalities), as Pope and Prince conceded various "liberties"
and "immunities" in an effort to win allies to their side. And it
was these intermediate institutions, not governments, which were
largely responsible for the freedom that is unique to the Western
World.

A remarkable system of competing governments also existed in
America for many decades prior to the War for Independence. The
colonials came to regard their provincial governments as
independent and autonomous institutions that were necessary to
check British power. And the British government, in its turn,
restrained the power of the colonial assemblies. This situation
resulted in a paralysis of power (since neither government could
do much) and in a great deal of personal liberty.

Later, after the countervailing power of Britain had been
eliminated by a successful Revolution, the Constitution
established a powerful national government - which, as Madison
proudly announced during the Philadelphia Convention, was vested
with greater powers than even the British Parliament against which
Americans "have so lately rebelled."

This sentiment was seconded in The
Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, who criticized
the fundamental principles of the American Revolution, called for
their repudiation by the American people, and advocated instead a
Constitution and monopolistic government that were based on a
newer and more sophisticated "science" of political
sovereignty.

In just a few short years the decentralized legal pluralism of
pre-Revolutionary America had succumbed to the logic of
sovereignty and a powerful central government - those evil
Siamese-twins that are largely responsible for our present unhappy
condition.

Consider two of the most powerful and influential ideas in
twentieth century politics: the notion of an all-powerful State
that is the sole arbiter of justice, and the notion of an
infallible general will that can force people to be free. The
former was the brainchild of Thomas Hobbes, the latter of
J.J. Rousseau. Consider also that it was these two philosophers of
sovereignty who, more than anyone else, separated sovereignty from
its religious roots in the divine right of kings, gave it a
secular foundation, and unleashed the "mortal god" of Leviathan on
the Western World.

I don't defend anarchism because I ever expect to see an
anarchist society. (An anarchist America is almost as unlikely as
an Objectivist America.) But I do think we can effectively combat
statism with the right intellectual ammunition, and this includes
the total repudiation of political sovereignty in favor of
individual rights and voluntary institutions.

The address of this document:
http://www.ifi.uio.no/~thomas/po/rational-anarchism.html